And those who strive hard for Us, We will most certainly guide them in Our ways; and Allah is most surely with the doers of good. 29:69 The Quran

Living with Nuclear Iran

Syed Javed Hussain

Anti-Iran passion seems to have befogged the Western intelligentsia to such an extent that far fetched and illusionary analogies are drawnbetween the collapse of the soviet empire and the opposition movement in Iran.

Over ambitious sphinxes in the West think Iranian opposition iscomparable in many ways to what happened in the Lenin shipyards in the Polish port of Gdansk in 1978. According to them, it is an embryonic anticommunist movement, led by Lech Walesa, which heralded the collapse of the Soviet empire 11 years later.

How naïve one can be when carried away by whims and emotions. The bigot in the West is more interested in the regime change in Iran than to worry about its ‘almost there’ nuclear status.

Surgical strikes are being promoted as one of the measures to effect the regime change. Israel considers it doable. Its so called Middle Eastern experts recommend it to go for surgical strikes inside Iran on the lines of similar strikes it had on Syria on Sep. 6, 2007 when it had bombed a suspected nuclear site in a remote part of the country. Syria did not take the case to the UN, God knows why, however, it is highly doubted that will Iran remain silent without any robust reaction.

No body doubts Iran will hit back with full force. On Sunday, Iranian parliament passed a law earmarking $20 million to ‘support progressive currents that resist illegal activities by the governments of the U.S and Britain .’

The funds are to be used to ‘confront plots and unjust restrictions’ by the U.S and the UK against Iran and to disclose ‘human rights abuses by the two countries.’ The move is welcome but is rather belated. Now, at least Iran will have resources earmarked to counter onesided diabolical propaganda of the US backed media in the West.

This signifies Iran ‘s tough stance and is a clear pointer to those who believe that keeping the military option open can help pressure Iran to submission.

Last Thursday, the IAEA had passed a resolution demanding that Iran immediately stop building newly ‘self-revealed’ nuclear facility near Qum and freeze the uranium enrichment.

Despite their barrage of accusations, it is still not clear under what international law or any other law that governs inter-state relations the UN nuclear watch dog can demand of Iran not to enrich uranium.

Unlike Israel , Iran is a signatory of the NPT and according to this treaty it has got all the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, which Iran has all along been claiming to do. Iran is being pushed to the corner for some diabolical purposes. Barak H Obama, has either been won over or gone hostage to the APEC at home: who can withstand such relentless propaganda as theirs.

Even before the IAEA meeting the USA had imposed new installment of its own sanctions on Iran that spoke volumes about the US insincerity in reaching out some understanding with Iran on its nuclear programme.

Total reversal of Iran ‘s nuclear programme is the objective of ‘the five plus one’ so-called leaders of the free world, which seems too ambitious to warrant any attention by Iran . What right these ‘bastards’ have got to prevent Iran from exploiting nuclear technology for civilian purposes?

Majority of these nations were erstwhile usurping imperialists who kept their subjects away from knowledge, advancement, progress and enlightenment. Now, when their former slaves are coming up and matching their masters in every aspect, the bastardly unpalatable masters are unsettled. In defiance of the illegal and illogical demand of the UN to halt the programme, Iranian government has approved a plan to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities.

The government has ordered the Atomic Energy organization of Iran to begin building five uranium enrichment sites that have already been studied and proposed five other locations for the future construction within two months.

The announcement is likely to stoke already high Tension between Iran and the West, but the act itself is opportune and to right direction. Iran need not hide any of its peaceful nuclear activities. This should help build international consensus on Iran ‘s nuclear programme. This time Iran is refreshingly open.

The cabinet has ordered that the 10 new sites should have a scale equal to Nantanz’s, which is an industrial-scale uranium enrichment plant that is supposed to eventually house 54,000 centrifuges. At the beginning of November, the IAEA reported that about 8,600 centrifuges had been set up but only about 4,000 were enriching uranium.

The furors over the newly revealed minuscule enrichment facility, known as Fordo, which can house only 3,000 centrifuges, seem storm in a tea cup. Iran has high ambitious. According to its president Iran will need to install 500,000 centrifuges throughout the planned enrichment facilities to produce between 250 to 300 tons of fuel annually.

Their need is genuine. Iran ‘s nuclear agency has been tasked with providing 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear power plants during in the next 20 years. Iran can’t, in any circumstances depend on foreign fuel for the power plants.

Words like ‘peaceful and civilian’ are never used. If they are already so convinced that Iran ‘s approach to its nuclear programme is non-civilian than what are they negotiat-ing for? The West will have to come to terms with the almost there ‘nuclear threshold’ of Iran , because present day Iran is already there.

The West should work on modalities how to monitor Iran ‘s nuclear development effectively so that any deviation from the straight path is noticed immediately. Further, Iran needs to benefit from its membership of the NPT. It is not one way traffic. If the IAEA proves futile to Iran then what will tempt Iran to keep its membership? The IAEA’s biased tilt away from Iran is not doing any service to its basic premise of existence.

Undue pressure on Iran might force the nation to break its ties with the organization and get rid of a nuisance which Isreal has avoided by simply not signing the treaty. Any further arm trusting will force Iran to justifiably scale down its cooperation with the IAEA and militarize its nuclear programme.

Information

Even before the IAEA meeting the USA had imposed new installment of its own sanctions on Iran that spoke volumes about the US insincerity in reaching out some understanding with Iran on its nuclear programme.﻿